Obscurity of expression is considered a flaw. Not so, however, in the speech or writing of intellectual gurus. It is not just that insufficiently competent readers refrain, as they should, from passing judgment on what they don't understand. All too often, what readers do is judge profound what they have failed to grasp. Obscurity inspires awe, a fact the author has been only too aware of, living as he has been in the Paris of Sartre, Lacan, Derrida and other famously hard to interpret maîtres a penser. Here he tries to explain this 'guru effect'.